The Secret Ingredient to Building Lasting Relationships

October 10, 2017

When I say relationships, I mean all kinds of it – friendships, romantic relationships, work place relationships, parent-child relationships, housemates, every kind of relationship you can ever think of.

Relationships come in all shapes and sizes and inasmuch as we would love them to go on forever, sometimes they are cut short. In some cases, these relationships are cut off intentionally. In some others, sadly, they are not intentional. Friction, misunderstanding, change of plans, cheating, ego, pressure, anything can cause a relationship to unintentionally disrupt.

What if I told you that there is a secret to building very lasting relationships? We may think that relationships are just meant to be whatever happens. They dissolve, oh well, it was meant to be. They last forever, cool, it lasted, praise God, nice. Did you know that you can work hard at relationships the way you work hard to make grade A in school, the way you try to please your boss?

It is not enough to be in relationships of different types with different people. It is important to work at them, nurture them and invest in these relationships. If we could, we would avoid the friction, right? Right.

Communication! This is the secret ingredient to building lasting relationships. Communication!

By communication, I mean, thoughtful and clear communication.

A lot of times, we communicate wrongly or don’t communicate at all. We assume, presume and hold grudges. We leave things as they are and hope they get better. If they don’t we are automatically done and this goes on and on in our relationships. We, because we are busy don’t find time to communicate, commune and just enjoy ourselves. We fly from place to place chasing dreams and accomplishing goals. You may want to call it ‘fulfilling purpose’. What-e-ver. On and on we build shabby, lifeless relationships, relationships with no mutual respect and value.

You have been hurt by a friend and instead of you to confront, with tact, of course, you pretend that it was an intentional move and you keep quiet. You suspect a close colleague, all of a sudden is too full of himself and instead of you to see how peace can reign, you withdraw. Isn’t that what they wanted? You want to make it easy for them. If unfortunately this colleague of yours is your type, it’s over. You both withdraw, don’t talk about it and the relationship is ruined.

You have gone for three days and have said nothing to the love of your life. Maybe a scanty good morning’s and good night’s here and there. Somehow you expect the relationship to last, I don’t know how, but you do expect it to last. It’s been worse that you have been off for two weeks! And it’s happened twice in three months. The only excuse you have is that you are busy, nothing more.